Field of the Invention
The subject invention relates generally to glassware forming machines, and more particularly to an apparatus for ensuring consistent and accurate delivery of gobs of molten glass to the blank mold of an individual section (I.S.) type glassware forming machine.
Machines for molding glass bottles usually include a plurality of molds above which is placed a reservoir of molten glass. Glass passes from the reservoir in a slow stream and is sheared into gobs for sequential direction to the respective blank molds.
Typically a gob distributor located just below the shears directs a gob into the guide trough of a respective mold, the gob sliding under gravity and being deflected to fall vertically into the blank mold. The gob distributor then indexes to another position for delivering the subsequent gob and the timing of the machine is arranged to deliver gobs of glass to each mold in regular sequence. Hitherto, the method of aligning the gob guide trough and deflector has been relatively crude thus leading to imprecise guidance of the gob and the possibility of nonvertical entry into the blank mold.
Typically each part of the apparatus for guiding the gob from the gob distributor to the mold is separately mounted on the machine frame. Further, the position of each part is separately adjustable to permit accurate alignment of adjacent parts, the trough being pivotally adjustable up and down while the deflector adjusts vertically and horizontally relative to the machine frame. Horizontal adjustment of the deflector results in pivotal movement of the trough in a horizontal plane. In practice, alignment is often time consuming since adjustment of the position of one part of the apparatus affects the position of adjacent parts. The method and means for aligning the gob delivery apparatus have remained largely unchanged for many years. An example of a conventional gob delivery system having an alignment apparatus of the type just described is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,341,315 to Patschorke.
A significant improvement to the alignment apparatus of conventional gob delivery systems is provided in the co-pending parent application Ser. No. 07/769,924. In that application there is disclosed a gob guide apparatus including a trough and a deflector which are position adjustable so as to permit corrective alignment of the position of the exit end of the deflector over the blank mold while maintaining the centerline alignment of the trough and deflector. This is accomplished by pivotally mounting the entrance end of the trough to the machine frame so as to permit horizontal pivotal movement of the trough and deflector essentially as a unit, while also permitting the deflector position relative to the trough to be adjustable in a direction towards or away from the trough along an axis generally coincident with the trough centerline. While providing significant advantages over the conventional alignment systems, this design is somewhat costly in situations requiring retrofitting to existing machines because of the necessity of installing a new deflector. A new deflector is required because a different mounting is used to journably mount the deflector to the carriage. The subject invention provides the advantages of the previous design while permitting the use of the existing deflector.
A further disadvantage of previous gob delivery systems involves the positional control of the gobs on the deflector. Ideally, the scoop, trough and deflector are aligned and oriented so that a gob entering the deflector travelling in a non-vertical direction will be guided along the deflector so as to exit the deflector vertically. For this purpose, the contour of the deflectors are manufactured to very tight tolerances and are ground to shape by hand. Nevertheless, no two deflectors are exactly alike in shape and consequently it has been found that a deflector which is otherwise precisely aligned with the trough and the center of the blank mold opening may have its exit end oriented so that gobs exit the deflector slightly skewed from the desired vertical orientation. Hitherto, the only adjustments which could be made to compensate for this problem involved moving the deflector exit horizontally off center relative to the blank mold opening. Although such adjustments provide some degree of compensation, performing the adjustments can be a time-consuming task of trial and error and further adjustments may be necessary when the molds are changed. The present invention addresses these problems by providing the deflector with a pivotal adjustment capability which adjusts the exit angle so as to permit the gobs to exit the deflector in a vertical direction. While an alignment system having a deflector exit pivotal adjustment capability is not in itself new, the combination of such feature in an alignment system which maintains centerline alignment between the deflector and trough provides alignment capabilities not heretofore found in previous systems.